With Andrea Barrett, I think it is a given, that there is more to a story, or a title or a character's actions than what's most apparent to the naked eye. So, the "littoral zone"?

"The littoral zone is the part of a sea, lake or river that is close to the shore. In coastal environments the littoral zone extends from the high water mark, which is rarely inundated, to shoreline areas that are permanently submerged. It always includes this intertidal zone and is often used to mean the same as the intertidal zone. However, the meaning of "littoral zone" can extend well beyond the intertidal zone."

In Andrea Barrett's short story "The Littoral Zone", she takes as her subject the "happily(?) ever after" period in a couples' life. What happens when you give up one, already partially lived, not especially unhappy life (or in this case a pair of people) and trade it in for what seems to promise an ever after lifetime of passion? Only to discover the ever after is actually in reality pretty disappointing.

Once again, the people in Barrett's story are both scientists and teachers. He, a botanist, and she a teacher of invertebrate zoology at a small college in New York. They have come to the New Hampshire coast to do research at a marine biology research station. Both are drawn to the island for research as it is an opportunity they can't pass up--the pay was too good, but by the part way through the course they agree that the pay is not enough.

"The days before they became so aware of each other have blurred in their minds, but they agree that their first real conversation took place on the afternoon devoted to the littoral zone."

Maybe the draw and then the disappointment is the perfect metaphor for what happens to the two lovers. They instantly click despite the island's shortcomings (no fresh water for which to bathe and drinking water brought in on a boat--meaning hot, sticky, salty, thirsty, itchy students and teachers).

Ruby is telling the story after the fact, however. And it's clear from what she says, that her life with Jonathan has not been the happy, passionate love affair that seemed so promising at the moment.

"They have always agreed that the worst moment, for each of them, was when they stepped from the boat to the dock on the final day of the course and saw their families waiting in the parking lot."

Their families--unaware and hopeful--nothing else would seem as awful as that exact moment of treachery towards them. The children, now grown, seem more or less contented. They were happy "enough" growing up. They don't try and dissect their parent's relationship, just accept it with their little bit of curiosity. What happened on the island?

This is what I always think of as a "sliding door" moment. I think we have all had them, and I know I often think of those "what ifs" as well. You know--if you make a dash for a train and make it just in time, how might your life differ, the outcome change, if you had not made it? If you had missed the train? They had a moment of bliss, or connection and took up the offer, so to speak. They don't wonder what their lives would have been like had they chosen differently, though, the life they did chose has turned out to be simple and ordinary, much like themselves.

"They're sensible people, and very well-mannered; they remind themselves that they were young and then and are middle aged now, and that their fierce attraction would naturally ebb with time. Neither likes to think about how much of the thrill of the their early days together came from the obstacles they had to overcome."

Yet another thoughtful, introspective story. It leaves me wondering about that littoral zone. Maybe the solution, the explanation is here:

"Ruby had talked about the littoral zone, that space between high and low watermarks where organisms struggle to adapt to the daily rhythm of immersion and exposure."

Something to think about.

Next week: "Rare Bird".

* * *

This week's (August 3 issue) New Yorker story, "Five Arrows" is by a new to me author, Heinz Insu Fenkl. It is very much a storyteller's story filled with images of dreams and folklore and symbolism. There is some interesting and rather sad imagery in it. Did you know that the number four is unlucky in Korea? Much like the number thirteen here? A young man returns from America to Korea and travels to the countryside to visit "Big Uncle" who has absented himself to the countryside with his gangrenous leg. He tells young Insu about how he came to be in the situation he finds himself. Do you think this is true:

"You should always remember your dreams, Insu-ya. Dreams are your real life. It's a shame if you don't remember it."

I really love this image, don't you? A sunny window and a book or magazine in hand. What more can a person ask for, right? I keep telling myself I need to choose a few new "reading" images for my reading notes posts, but then I return always to my favorites.

Another week comes to an end and another month has flown by. Wasn't it just January? I'm not sad to put July behind me as I love fall and I actually like the start of school--a bright sunny day but a crisp one with just a hint of falling leaves and the changing of the seasons. I know I am getting ahead of myself, but a little heat and humidity in summer goes a long way for me. Needless to say I am looking forward to cooler weather in the mountains--in just three weeks time!

I have decided that I will take almost all 'in progress' books with me on my vacation, but I am going to allow myself one new start. At the moment I am thinking it is going to be a mystery, and you should see the pile that has sprouted up next to my bed in contemplation. This is, of course, going to be an agonizing choice.

But for now, I am working at chipping away at the pile of books I am currently reading. I had such high hopes this month for making real progress on them. I thought I was going to have a spectacularly good reading month, when it has turned out to be yet another disappointment. I'm not quite sure what to do about it. Not worry and just enjoy the books I do pick up, is the obvious solution. But there is a little voice niggling away at the back of my mind. Shh. I keep telling it to go away, but it won't be quiet.

The book closest to being finished is Winston Graham's Ross Poldark: A Novel of Cornwall 1783-1787 with less than 100 pages. If I read it solely today, might I manage to finish it? An iffy prospect, but maybe I will give it a go. I have thoroughly enjoyed it, by the way, and the TV adaptation. How can you miss between waves crashing along the Cornish Coast and a dark, handsome broody Ross Poldark? I have the next book ready to go, Demelza: A Novel of Cornwall 1788-1790, but I likely will wait now that the first season is quickly approaching the last episode.

Next up is Laurie King's O Jerusalem, which I recently mentioned. Less than 150 pages to read and I feel no less close to a solution to this particular mystery. Laurie King's mysteries always feel a little like intellectual puzzles and I tend to let them (and most mysteries in general) just roll out and take their time being solved. I could happily dive right into the next book in the series, but I have not yet decided if I will do so.

I do plan on moving quickly on to the next Ursula Marlowe mystery, Unlikely Traitors, however, as soon as I finish The Serpent and the Scorpion. I am rereading the books as a matter of fact, in anticipation of doing just that since the third book, after a long hiatus, was published not too long ago. I had almost given up on the chance there might be a new book, and now that I have it I can't wait to start reading.

Did I ever tell you that I finally settled on Elizabeth Peters's Legend of Green Velvet as the next book from my own stacks to read? So far, it's been quite a fun read. It was written in the 1970s and other readers might call it somewhat dated, but I have to say I am really enjoying it. Okay, so a fellow American traveler does call our heroine, Susan, a "chick", but somehow that is all part of the book's charm. Or maybe I should say, it's really groovy.

Along with Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, these are the books I have mainly been spending my reading time with. There are some really odious characters in the James novel. I feel a major manipulation and draining of an heiress's inheritance coming on. It reminds me a lot of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos's Dangerous Liaisons to be honest. Is there any hope for Isabel Archer, I wonder? If I keep up a steady reading pace, hopefully I won't have too long to wait and find out.

Also this weekend I have my short stories to read--one by Andrea Barrett and my New Yorker story (which will be a surprise as I have not yet received my issue and haven't looked online yet). Hopefully both will be good. And if I can manage to squeeze in a little nonfiction reading as well, I'll be very pleased indeed.

It's taken me a while to get back to Nebraska-writer, Mignon Eberhart, but I knew I would enjoy the next book by her I picked up her, and I did. She has been called the American Agatha Christie (though I think that is a label that has been pinned on other writers as well). She was writing books at the same time as Christie, as a matter of fact I think she created her female sleuth, Nurse Keate, just before Christie's Miss Marple arrived on the scene. Apparently her standalone mystery, Death in the Fog which was published in 1933, is unlike her other books. But like The Mystery of Hunting's End which I read several years ago, it absolutely oozes with atmosphere. Atmosphere of the "it was a dark and stormy night" kind. The sort that was adapted onto the big screen in black and white with really 'moody' scenes. Really, the kind I think I like best. Chills from setting and suspense, not blatant and over the top violence. I love almost every type of mystery, but I'm especially fond of these vintage crime novels.

"Certain dank gardens cry aloud for a murder; certain old houses demand to be haunted; certain coasts are set apart for shipwreck."

Isn't that a great quote? It's by Robert Louis Stevenson and it appears right before the beginning of the novel. It should give you an idea of where Eberhart is going to take her reader. In this case, the setting is a cold, foggy afternoon. A real pea-souper of a day on Lake Michigan in Chicago. Katie Warren is returning home from a concert in her aunt's "heavy great car". She's not worried by the dense fog. She's a very capable driver. As a matter of fact she's a very capable young woman--until the Great Crash of '29 she was a successful stock broker. Now she lives with her aunt thanks to her good will and generosity. Had the invitation not been forthcoming, just where would she be?

The fog, however, makes it difficult for everyone--drivers and pedestrians alike. The fog is growing heavier, there is a hint of sleet on the windshields.

"Bits of automobiles loomed out of the fog here and there into confused, futuristic paths of lights; automobiles with their radiators or their rear fenders mysteriously gone. It was a kind of Cheshire-cat effect gone modern and very noisy."

As she stops for a red light she hears out of her window the oddest snatch of conversation. "'I won't,' it said simply, 'eat grape hair'. It paused and then added with plaintive earnestness: 'Nor yet glocks'." Slightly sinister it sounds, yet Katie is amused, knowing it will remain one of "life's little mysteries" as to who the speakers are. And a moment later shoulders and head looms out of the fog--a man, but someone she knows. Another relative of a friend of her aunt Mina's. Another guest at her aunt's house and so she offers him a ride home. Back to Mina's somber house, but a welcome haven for poor, penniless Katie.

What might have been formerly a haven in a storm will soon become almost a prison. As capable as Katie may be in her driving, the car loses control and begins a slide on the bridge connecting the main road to the lane leading up to her aunt's house. The slope, the icy bridge, the heavy car, Katie tries to control it all, but she cannot. It might not have been more than a simple slide and fender bender, but someone had just stepped out into the lane at that very moment. And Katie, unable to control the car, rolls over a body. Not a body yet, but her aunt Mina's companion. It was an accident. Katie has killed Charlotte Weinberg. If Katie is capable, Charlotte is formidable. Aunt Mina is a wealthy older woman who has been in ill health and Charlotte rules the house.

And now Charlotte is dead, Katie is shaken and unnerved and out of this horrible accident will roll a very twisty mystery. It was an accident, wasn't it? When the, in this story--quite odious--detective arrives, what might have been a "simple" yet tragic accident becomes a case of possible murder in cold blood. And Katie is, of course, the main suspect. And perhaps one with so much to gain. Charlotte was controlling of Mina and of everyone else in the household, and it is a full house--filled with relatives and servants.

With Charlotte out of the way, anything goes. It had been assumed that she would have inherited all. Now Mina is likely to change her will and there is going to be a line of relatives happy to take her place. Aunt Mina had failing health, but with Charlotte absent, she seems to rally, which throws in question just what Charlotte's motives had been. And everyone else's motives, too.

Death in the Fog is a wonderfully atmospheric puzzle. Not quite your typical detective story, since it is the main suspect you find yourself rooting for and quite put off by Mr. Crafft's smarminess. Like a good Christie mystery, all the clues are there if you can piece them together, though I tend to just enjoy sitting back and enjoying the ride and let the mystery-solving unroll while the fog closes in around the house. It makes for a claustrophobic, chilling sort of read. In the back of your mind you know that that 'grape hair' and those 'glocks' are somehow the key to the mystery, but how do you possibly make sense of it all.

I'll definitely read more by Mignon Eberhart--I think she was quite popular and fairly prolific, and to those who like vintage crime she is well worth searching out. I want to go back and begin with her Nurse Keate novels. I think there was at one time a whole genre of 'nurse novels' mysteries and romance alike. This was a perfect addition to my murder and mayhem summer mystery reading. I've been trying to read widely and still have several more books to finish before summer's end. I think I am only missing an international crime novel, something a little grittier perhaps. Of all the types of books I have had on the go of late, mysteries have been daily fare for me and I have had quite a satisfying run of them!

You know what a vacation is (what we all want and need and what I will actually be able to partake in next month!), and you've heard of "stay"-cations. How about a "book"-cation? One of the reasons I love reading so much is being able to travel far and wide, back and forth in time and to places I have only dreamed of. Occasionally I will read a book set somewhere I have traveled to and then can feed my imagination yet have solid visuals to base the settings on, and some places I am reading about are places I hope to travel to someday.

You might not be surprised that one of the places (given the classes I have taken recently) I am very keen to travel to is Israel. To be honest I had never considered choosing that as a destination before I began reading Israeli literature. There are a number of places I want to see in Israel now, but at the top of my list is Jerusalem. Every May there is usually a tour offered (as long as that part of the world is reasonably calm) through the university where I work. If I planned and saved I might be able to actually afford it someday. Until then, there are always books.

So, how serendipitous that Jerusalem turned up in my reading yesterday. I knew Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes would eventually make their way to the city in Laurie King's O, Jerusalem, which I have been slowly reading. It happened to be the next book up in the series. Although Mary and Holmes are married (this is book #5) their adventures in Palestine actually took place several years earlier in 1918. I'll save talking about the mystery until I finish reading (which I hope will be soon as things are moving quite quickly now), but there is an excerpt that I knew would be perfect to share as a Tuesday teaser.

On arriving (on foot--and Mary is dressed as an Arab boy--needless to say Mary and Holmes have entered Palestine clandestinely and their reason for being in the Holy Land very hush hush) Mary is overwhelmed by the sight of the city of Jerusalem--a place she has dreamed of visiting. Mary is Jewish and a scholar of theology, so this is a moment of great significance for her. Her descriptions are wonderfully exotic and inviting:

"We threaded our way among a fleet of horse-drawn carriages for hire and entered Jerusalem in the footsteps--literally, as he had chosen to mark his pilgrim's entrance on foot--of the conqueror Allenby. To our right rose the Citadel, somewhere to our left lay the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, before us sprawled the great labyrinth of the bazaar, and all around us swirled an informal market, a miscellany of goods and peoples. I saw none of these. I did not notice the picturesque Copts and Armenians, did not register the toasted-sesame smell of the round bread loaves that passed beneath our noses on the panniers of a donkey, did not even hear the strange, flat clang of bells or the 'bakshish' cries of the beggars or the polyglot of tongues. My whole being, my entire awareness, was taken up by a small, crudely lettered sign propped in the window of the Grand New Hotel: Baths."

Hah. I bet you weren't expecting that! I love Mary Russell. She is such a wonderful, and wryly witty character. That's what a week's travels, on foot, in the heat and dust, filthy and mud-caked will do to a person! Though, the smell of those bread loaves would likely have given me pause.

I didn't forget about my nonfiction/art reading last week. It was just too hot and humid for me to write proper posts. It's still too hot and humid (and I am sorry to say this, but I am ready for summer to be over--at least the sticky weather--bring on August please), so rather than tell you all about those very important pre-Impressionist era painters who rocked the world of art, let me share a few of the paintings that we accept now as a 'given' of genius, but at the time were quite shocking!

"The Raft of the Medusa" by Théodore Géricault (1818-1819)

"Géricault renders the grim human catastrophe of the resulting shipwreck (the captain sailed too close to the shore off Senegal) with unflinching detail. He ups the ante by using a theatrical style of painting much favored by the likes of Caravaggio and Rembrandt called 'chiaroscuro', where bold contrasts between light and shade are accentuated to dramatic effect."

He used as his model Eugene Delacroix--an artist from the upper echelons of Parisian society.

"Liberty Leading the People" by Eugene Delacroix (1830)

Did you know that this Liberty is the one the Statue of Liberty was based? At the time the pro-republican message would have been quite inflammatory.

"Instead of depicting her body with classically clear clean lines, he added great tufts of underarm hair, a touch of truthful representation that is likely to have had the academicians reaching for their smelling salts."

"Liberty Leading the People is a virtuoso display of modern painting techniques with its vivid colors, attention to light, and brisk brush strokes, all of which would be central elements of the Impressionism movement some forty years later."

You can see Gustave Courbet's "Origin of the World" here. Not to be a prude, but to avoid raising any eyebrows (the sexually frank painting wasn't even exhibited in public until 1988), let me just tell you what Will Gompertz had to say about it. You can go look at your own risk.

"Delacroix's Romanticism had introduced vivid color and flair to painting, while Courbet's Realism brought unfettered, non-idealized truth about ordinary life (he boasted he never lied in his paintings). Both artists rejected the rigidity of the Academy and the neo-classicist Renaissance style. But the conditions were not yet right for the Impressionists."

Enter stage left, Edouard Manet! "Olympia" (1863)

"The year 1863 was a breakthrough one for modern art. The Salon des Refusés (an officially sanctioned exhibition of paintings rejected from the official Salon), Manet's Olympia and the first stirrings of an artistic counterculture all helped to create an environment where the ambitious young painters living in and around Paris could break free."

Along with these artists, it was Baudelaire who put into words what the artists were feeling and he supported them when everyone else seemed against them. I think I will have to look for Baudelaire's groundbreaking essay, "The Painter of Modern Life", this week.

" . . . it was Baudelaire who demanded that art of the present should not be about the past, but about modern life. Many of the ideas he set out in The Painter of Modern Life went on to be embodied in the founding principles of Impressionism. He claimed that 'for the sketch of manner, the depiction of bourgeois life . . .there is rapidity of movement which calls for equal speed of execution from the artist'. Sound familiar?"

This is a really fun and informative book, easy reading that puts it all into perspective. This week I'll be reading about the Impressionists (1870-90). Lots if -isms to get through until I get to "Art Now"!

Last week's short story was nicely multilayered and there was much to think about. I enjoyed this week's story, "The English Pupil", but it seemed to have a little less depth than the first. Still well done, it was almost more of a sketch of a great and famous man and quite melancholic in tone. The pupil in question is that of 18th century botanist, Carl Linnaeus. Despite the title of the story it was less about the pupil and more about the scientist.

"His once-famous memory was nearly gone, eroded by a series of strokes--he forgot where he was and what he was doing; he forgot the names of plants and animals; he forgot faces, places, dates. Sometimes he forgot his own name. His mind, which had once seemed to hold the whole world, had been occupied by a great dark lake that spread father every day and around which he tiptoed gingerly."

In a sleigh, in cold crisp air he watches the landscape speed by reminiscing over his long life. It's to his country estate that he is traveling. He hasn't much time left to live and he hasn't much happiness left, but this is his one last pleasure to be in the countryside he explored thinking back upon all the pupils he taught and the others, so many, that he can no longer remember who journeyed to meet and work with this great man.

"On this tour of Lappland with the whole world still waiting to be named, he's believed that he and everyone he loved would live forever."

"Now he had named almost everything and everyone knew his name. How clear and simple was the system of his nomenclature! Two names, like human names: a generic name common to all species of one genus; a specific name distinguishing differences. he liked names that clearly described a feature if the genus: Potamogeton, by the river; Dorsera, like a dew. Names that honored botanists also pleased him."

Imagine a world so new and fresh and unnamed. A world with so many secrets and mysteries yet to be unraveled. A world where everything must still be named. Imagine it all at your fingertips and your ideas and explorations and your choice of names to be forever after to be used by the whole world and for those names to carry on through time. The story may have been quietly constructed and perhaps less layered than the previous one, but still Andrea Barrett maybe offers the reader more to think about than at first glance! The beauty of reading short stories (and then thinking about them in order to write about them on a hot Sunday afternoon). A good story always offers some little surprise. A gift to the reader!

"Nature was a cryptogram and the scientific method a key; nature was a labyrinth and this method the thread of Ariadne. Or the world was an alphabet written in God's hand, which he, Carl Linnaus, had been called to decipher. One of his pupils had come to see him, one of the pupils he'd sent to all the corners of the world and called, half-jokingly, his apostles."

So beautiful is Barrett's writing! Nest week's story is "The Littoral Zone". I can't wait to see where it takes me.

* * *

I can't think why I have not yet read any of Tessa Hadley's longer fiction as I have loved each short story I have read by her (here and here). This week's New Yorker story is another by Hadley and I loved it as well. "Silk Brocade" is set in 1953 and then further along in the 1970s. One of those moments in time when something happens, maybe a little life shifting and and tragic, and then is reflected upon later in life. Only in this case, it is a daughter's life that is perhaps subtly changed because of those events. You can read the story for yourself here (go on--nudge, nudge and then come back and let me know what you think--it's not a long story, less than half and hour of your life, and you'll be all the better for it!). And if you want to know more about the story, read Hadley's Q&A here. Another wonderful story with more to it than meet's the eye upon first reading.

Look closely at this new Halloween Sampler by Prairie Schooler--just about my most favorite of needlework designers. Good Bye? Yes, they are retiring and the website will come down in early 2016. I know all good things must come to an end and everyone deserves a relaxing retirement, but the thought leaves me sort of bereft. I've been very slowly working on my little Prairie Fairy, but I think now is the time to step it up. I will have to do an inventory of the charts I own and decide if there are others I am missing that I can't live without. (Which will probably be all the other Prairie Schooler charts I don't already own). I think some stitching will have to go on vacation with me, too.

Speaking of stitching--I have a Picturetrail album to show off my needlework (actually considering how few people actually pass by, it is more a place to keep a record of my needlework finishes as I give a lot of things away). I no longer want to maintain the account (more a matter that I no longer want to pay a fee to use the resource), so does anyone know of a free photo hosting site? For the short term I am housing them in Dropbox. I know I can share my work there, but I think the set up is quite different. Suggestions welcome. I hesitate to store things on my own computer's hard drive these days as if something goes awry they might be lost.

I fully believe that timing can be everything when it comes to books. Read at the wrong time an otherwise fine book might end up an awful slog. Conversely some books come along at just the right moment and they are truly magical. Of course, that said, when it comes to Amos Oz, I knew I was already in the presence of an greatness and I don't think I am being overly effusive. I was looking forward all along to reading more of his work. I could kick myself now for not having written about his novel, My Michael which I read last year for my class. It's just another reason to pull the book out to reread (which I think of often actually and keep on a bedside pile) sooner than later so I can write about it more fully and properly as it deserves. There were a number of books I read in my class that I never got around to writing about unfortunately.

While we read excerpts from Oz's award-winning memoir a Tale of Love and Darkness, I had every intention of reading it in its entirety later. Only it has taken me a while to get back to it. If I was in a nonfiction reading slump recently I am out of it now. As a matter of fact, I find A Tale of Love and Darkness is in my hands more than almost any other book I have on the go (including the ones I am so near to completion). Don't get me wrong, I am in the middle of a number of really great reads, but this one is special. I'm not sure I can put it into words--other than you pick it up to read and feel like you are in perfect company. The sort of company you don't want to leave.

Aside from being exceedingly well written, and for me anyway, intensely interesting, having spent a year studying and reading Israeli literature taught by an instructor who is a contemporary Israeli author, I feel like what I am reading is really meaningful. It is familiar to me. There are little details that remind me of subjects discussed in class. It's like looking at an old photo, but this one is is vibrant colors and I recognize the people or the place. It's certainly not essential to know a subject or person or place intimately to appreciate a book, but knowing something more just gives it a little extra zing.

And you needn't know anything about the history of Israel to appreciate the book, so no worries there. I read this today and I know any other reader and lover of books will be able to relate to this:

"The one thing we had plenty of was books. They were everywhere: from wall to laden wall, in the passage and the kitchen and the entrance and on every windowsill. Thousands of books, in every corner of the apartment. I had the feeling that people might come and go, be born and die, but books went on forever. When I was little, my ambition was to grow up to be a book. Not a writer. People can be killed like ants. Writers are not hard to kill either. But not books: however systematically you try to destroy them, there is always a chance that a copy will survive and continue to enjoy a shelf life in some corner of an out-of-the-way library somewhere, in Reykjavik, Vallodolid, or Vancouver."

* * *

"My father had a sensual relationship with his books. He loved feeling them, stroking them, sniffing them. He took a physical pleasure in books: he could not stop himself, he had to reach out and touch them, even other people's books. And books then really were sexier than books today: they were good to sniff and stroke and fondle. There were books with gold lettering on fragrant, slightly rough leather bindings, that gave you gooseflesh when you touched them, as though you were groping something private and inaccessible, something that seemed to tremble at your touch. And there were other books that were bound in cloth-covered cardboard, stuck with glue that had a wonderful smell. Every book had its own private, provocative scent. Sometimes the cloth came away from the cardboard, like a saucy skirt, and it was hard to resist the temptation to peep into the dark space between body and clothing and sniff those dizzying smells."

Any other time I might waver at the sight of a five-hundred-plus page book, but this time I see the pleasure in those five-hundred-plus pages. It feels good to be getting back to my Israeli literature. I have a list of books and authors to read, many that were mentioned in class. I suspect I will be soon setting off down that reading path next.

Open Road Media has just released another of Rosamond Lehmann's novels, The Echoing Grove. A number of years ago (my how time flies) I read her first novel, Dusty Answer, and knew I liked her enough to begin collecting her other books. Strangely I never got around to looking for The Echoing Grove, so I was happy when Open Road Media offered me a chance to read it and sent along an ebook version, which now happily comes along with me on my daily bus ride to and from work.

In her review of it Marghanita Laski (another writer I admire and enjoy reading) noted "No English writer has told of the pains of women in love more truly or more movingly than Rosamond Lehmann . . . This is the book that Virginia Woolf wanted, the book that told what it felt like to be a woman." I'm keeping that in mind as I read. This is a story of a love triangle. Two sisters in love with the same man. He marries one and falls in love with and has an affair with the other. How do you get past such a transgression?

I will be writing about this one soon. I forgot what a wonderful writer Lehmann is. Why did I wait so long to pick up another of her books?

Behind the scenes at A Work in Progress . . . this year's reading has been wonky. My reading may well be all over the place and I am not finishing as many books of late as starting (though actually I have finished a number of books and so it is time to choose a new one), but other than a few small transgressions, I have mostly been reading from my own stacks.

I've picked a stack of rather summery, beachy, blockbuster sorts of reads and have pulled a number of books that look like entertaining reads. But how to decide. One of these might well be going with me on my upcoming mini-vacation, and I could see any of these as being just perfect 'long drives must find a good book to pass the time' sorts of reads. Some of these are so old I had forgotten I even owned them--hence my desire to 'read from my own stacks'!

But which to choose? Have you read any of these?

Legend in Green Velvet by Elizabeth Peters -- "Susan loved all things Scottish. So, when the opportunity presented itself, there was no question in her mind but that she would go in the archaeological dig in the Highlands. It was everything she could have wanted. And more. Much more."

Losing Julia by Jonathan Hull -- ". . . an astonishing story that will span almost a century, a story of memory and desire, history and destiny--and of the people who slip from our grasp, only to hold us forever . . . "

An Outrageous Affair by Penny Vincenzi -- "Moving from wartime Suffolk to Fifties Hollywood, from glitzy Madison Avenue to London's theatrical aristocracy and the machinations of cheque-book publishing, An Outrageous Affair explores the extraordinary, sometimes fatal consequences of truth."

Lots of Love by Fiona Walker -- "After thirteen years, all passion spent, Ellen and Richard have called it a day. With her life in suitcases and boxes, Ellen agrees to help her parents sell their unoccupied Cotswold cottage--then she plans to travel the world. Little does she know that idyllic Oddlode contains the world's sexiest hell-raiser, and she finds herself travelling uncharted waters to unknown territory--headlong into love."

Paris Never Leaves You by Adréana Robbins --"Setting her take in glamorous France and Spain, exotic Morocco, and the seductive Mediterranean, Adréana Robbins carries her readers on a passional journey into the lives of an impressionable young woman in contemporary Paris and of a controversial, hot-blooded man in the wild City of Light of the 1930s and World War II."

Foreign Fruit by Jojo Moyes -- "Merham is a well-ordered 1950s seaside town: the kind of town in which everyone knows there place (and those who don't are promptly put into it). Lottie Swift, an evacuee who has grown up with the respectable Holden family, loves Merham, while the Holdens' daughter Celia chafes against the constraints of the town. When a group of bohemians takes over Arcadia, a stark Art Deco house on the seafront, the girls are as drawn to its temptations as Merham's citizens are appalled by them. They set in place a chain of events which will have longstanding and tragic consequences for all concerned."

The Chestnut Tree by Charlotte Bingham -- "It is the summer of 1939, and the residents of the idyllic fishing village of Bexham are preparing for the war."

They all sound so delightfully juicy, how will I ever be able to decide?